


To Serve a Purpose

by Spiraling



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Character Death, Coming to terms with past lives, Emotional Abuse/Manipulation, Eventual Romance, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Mixed with my own head canons, Non-Graphic Violence, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Reincarnation, Slow Build, Teacher-Student Relationship, The abuse has nothing to do with any of the romantic relationships fyi, mostly canon compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-14 10:11:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2187816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spiraling/pseuds/Spiraling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren didn't know when dreams of the past started coming to him. He couldn't remember a time when the life he was living was the only life in his head. Armin realized early on that his memories came in two distinct sets, separate from each other but equally valid. He concluded easily that the life he was leading was not his first. Mikasa awoke with a start at age nine to find tears on her cheeks and a picture in her mind, the image of a boy she was sure she had never seen before, but somehow felt indebted to. Something deep in her subconscious was telling her that she had to find this boy, lest something terrible happen to him.</p>
<p>Armin once told Eren about a theory he'd read, that people are reincarnated over and over until they learn the lesson they are meant to learn, or serve the purpose they are meant to serve. Eren can't help but think they've missed their chance to do anything of real significance. They'd failed to defeat the titans. What did the universe want from them, if not that?</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Serve a Purpose

Eren didn't know when the past started coming to him. He couldn't remember a time when the life he was living was the only life in his head. His earliest memory - from this time around - was waking up in the middle of the night, running to his parents' bedroom, and flinging himself into their bed, into his mother's arms. He was sobbing out unintelligible apologies when his mother awoke, wrapped her arms around him and hushed him with a soothing tone.

"What's wrong, Eren?" she asked, troubled. "What are you saying sorry for?"

"I couldn't help you," Eren sobbed out, gasping around his words. "I couldn't help you and the monster got you."

Carla Jaeger squinted at her son through the darkness. "What do you mean, honey? Did you have a bad dream?"

"Not a dream!" Eren insisted, shaking his head vehemently. "When the wall fell down, and the house fell down, and the big monster ate you!"

Carla froze.

"It's okay," she reassured quietly. "It was just a dream. It's over now."

Despite her words, Eren could feel her tears falling into his hair.

"No!" he cried. "Not a dream!"

Eren was inconsolable, weeping and wailing and despite his mother's attempts to calm him, he refused to be dissuaded of his dream's reality. On the other side of the bed, his father finally started to stir, sitting up and fumbling around his nightstand in search of his glasses. When a desperate glance to her husband for help was met with no answers, Carla finally gave in.

"Eren, look at me," she said, tilting the boy's head up until his eyes met hers, forcing him to sit back slightly. "I'm right here, aren't I?" Eren nodded shakily. "I'm here now, and I'm fine, and that's all that matters." Eren surged forward and embraced his mother once more, tears falling freely as she cradled him to her chest. "I'm fine now. Now is all that matters."

Eventually Eren cried himself out, lulled back to sleep by his mother rubbing his back and muttering reassurances into his hair. It was only once he was softly snoring in his mother's lap that his father finally spoke.

"He remembers, doesn't he?" Grisha asked, a tone of dread tainting his voice.

"I told him it was just a dream," Carla replied softly, wiping her tears from her eyes, "but he didn't believe me." She looked to her husband, feeling utterly helpless for the first time in this life. "What should we do? I don't want him to live in that world again, even if it is only in his memories."

"There's not much we can do." Grisha frowned as he looked down on their son, whose tear-stained cheeks belied the peaceful expression sleep had planted on his face. "There are numerous cases of people remembering their past lives as toddlers or children, then forgetting as they age. We can only hope that Eren forgets."

"We didn't forget," Carla pointed out, her tone flat.

"True, but we didn't even remember until we met each other." Grisha moved closer to his wife, his child, wrapping one arm around Carla's shoulders to pull her close, his other hand rubbing Eren's back as he slept. "Hopefully our son will be spared the memories that plague us."

But of course, Eren didn't remember that part.

Sometimes, Eren would tell his parents about his dreams. He told them about joining the army, about how his sister was so much better than him at everything they did, not to mention better than the rest of their peers. "You don't have a sister," his father pointed out. Eren pouted, because obviously he knew that, but he _had_ had a sister. She just wasn't here anymore. Why she wasn't, he couldn't understand.

He told them about saving his best friend, the one with the golden hair and the serious eyes, from the jaws of a monster. "You don't know any blond boys, do you?" his mother had asked him with a frown. "What's his name?" Eren grumbled under his breath, scuffing his shoes against the tiles of the kitchen floor. He didn't know the boy's name. He didn't know his sister's name. Most words were muted, warped, in his dreams. Screams, crashes, explosions, all rattled his eardrums as if they were wrapped up in his pillow case, between his sheets with him. Conversations, names, titles, were barely there whispers, garbled, like when he heard his parents fighting in the living room and he could tell they were angry but never quite knew what they were saying. Surges of emotion would wash over him sometimes, give him a glimmer of context, a hint as to how he had felt when the words had been spoken, but specifics were lost.

He told them about the squad that was charged to protect him, about the man who never smiled at him, rarely praised him, but did everything in his power to keep him safe. "Okay, I'll bite," his mother relented. "Why did you need special protection? Wasn't everyone in danger?" Eren bit his tongue. How could a five year old look his mother in the eye and tell her he was one of the monsters who had devoured her? How could he explain that most of humanity wanted him dead? How could he claim he was more worthy of protection than all the ones who died carrying out said protection? Tears pricked at his eyes, and Carla scooped him up to press kisses to his forehead and his wet cheeks and mutter assurances of, "Don't worry, my boy, there's nothing your father and I can't protect you from ourselves," into his hair. Eren only cried harder.

He told them about being taken, by the pair he thought were his friends, by the policemen he had looked up to as a child. That had been the final straw. His mother had slammed her fist against the wall, startling both Eren and his father. "That's enough, Eren!" she had shouted, eyes gleaming with tears held back only by the dam of anger. "You can't keep telling these stories! Boys your age get stolen all the time, by people they trust and by authority figures, and it isn't something to tell tales about!"

"I'm not telling tales!" Eren had shouted back. "It happened! After you got eaten by the monster and daddy went away! When I was bigger!"

"I wasn't eaten! I'm right here, your father is right there, and there are no monsters outside!" Carla was exasperated, exhausted from trying to convince her son through logic that the events he was remembering hadn't actually transpired. She had had enough. Why did he have to remember? "You're a little boy, Eren, and I don't know what's putting these ideas into your head to give you these bad dreams, but that's all they are! Dreams!"

"It's not dreams!" Eren insisted, as well as a child on the verge of tears could. "I remember!"

"Eren," his father chimed in, the only calm voice in the room. "Of course you remember your dreams. I remember my dreams all the time. So does your mother, and so does nearly everyone else in the world." He stood from his seat at his work desk and approached the couch where Eren sat.

"No!" Eren yelled as his father knelt down in front of him, little hands balled into fists beating against the sofa. "It happened! For real!"

"It happened in your head, son," Grisha said softly. "That's what dreams are." Carla came up behind her husband and laid a hand on his shoulder in support.

"Think about it, Eren," she said, voice quiet now. "If the monsters were real, then where are they now?" Eren glowered, but didn't reply. He couldn't answer a question he didn't know the answer to. "You dreamed them up. Just like you dreamed up the girl you think is your sister, and the boy you think is your friend, and everyone else you dream about. You dream about them because you want them to be real, but they're not."

The tears flowed freely from Eren's eyes as he glared up at his parents. "They _are_ real," he said weakly, his voice cracking around the lump in his throat. "Just 'cause I don't know their names doesn't mean they're not my friends!"

Carla dropped onto the couch, taking Eren by the shoulders and staring into his eyes. "Why won't you listen to us?" she pleaded, her volume rising again as the anger crept back into her tone. "Why can't you accept that they're just dreams?" _Why can't you let them go, and forget?_

Eren looked from his mother to his father, tearful and bitter and adamant that his memories were real, unable to understand why his parents were so intent on making him believe they weren't, and incapable of expressing any of these things with his six year old's vocabulary. "You're lying!" he cried out, shoving his mother's hands away and shooting off the couch, sprinting all the way to his bedroom, and slamming the door behind him.

Carla rose to follow him, but Grisha grabbed her wrist and held her still. "Let him be alone for a while," he said quietly.

Carla fell back to the sofa with a sob, burying her face in her hands and letting the tears flow freely. "He's going to hate us," she sobbed out, body quaking with the force of her cries. "We're horrible parents."

Her husband sat down next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her tight against his chest.

"We'd be worse if we let him remember."

In his room, Eren had hidden himself under the covers of his bed, and was sobbing into his pillow. _They're real!_ he told himself. They had to be real. He remembered them, and regardless of what his father told him, they were different from other dreams he had. They had to be real. His sister, his blond friend, the long faced boy he fought with, the bald boy and ponytailed girl always causing mischief together, the straight laced commander who seemed to know infinities more than anyone else could ever dream of, the small man with the tired eyes that had seen far too much - and his team, that lost their lives to protect Eren from the monster that hunted him, and even the monsters themselves.

They had to be real. Because if Eren couldn't trust his own memories, then what could he trust?

Armin didn’t have dreams. Memories of his past life came to him as naturally as memories of the past week. He realized early on that the two sets of memories were separate but equally valid, and concluded easily that the life he was leading was not his first.

Growing up, the most confusing thing for Armin had been that nobody else spoke of their past lives like he did. He would tell his parents story upon story of his time with the military: of when the wall fell at Trost and they were able to reclaim it with Eren’s surprise titan shifting ability, of their first expedition beyond Wall Rose and the female titan who turned out to be their friend, of the titans in the walls and the ape-like titan who could scale the wall as though it were nothing more than a mere fence, of the princess hidden among their ranks and the civilians’ ill-placed persecution of them as they fought for the truth of their past. His parents always listened with great interest, but never reciprocated with their own stories. One day, out of sheer curiosity, Armin finally asked his parents what it had been like when they were sent outside the walls in the supposed reclamation effort. They answered him with confused expressions.

"What do you mean, honey?" his mother had asked, sounding slightly concerned.

"They’re your stories, Arm," his father continued. "We don’t know anything more about them than what you tell us."

It hit Armin hard to realize his parents didn’t remember. They didn’t know he was telling them of his life after their deaths, they thought he was just spinning tall tales. Armin never questioned the validity of his memories - he knew nothing so vivid could be anything less than real - but he never spoke of them to his parents again.

The last life had been hell. If they didn’t remember it, he figured they were better off.

When Armin was eight, his parents took him to a public park near his elementary school. They hoped to draw their son out of his books and into society, but they had no idea how well their plan would work. Immediately upon entering the fenced-in playground area Armin saw a familiar face, and ran to him in breathless excitement.

"Eren!" Armin shouted his best friend’s name as he approached. When Eren turned to him with a look of mixed shock and confusion, he skidded to a halt. Eren eyed him carefully before speaking.

"How d’you know my name?" he asked, and Armin’s shoulders slouched as his world crashed down on him again. _Eren couldn’t remember either?_

"Oh, sorry," Armin apologized quickly, inspecting the mulch beneath his feet. "I thought you were my friend." He started to walk away, but Eren grabbed him by the hand and tugged him back.

"We are friends," Eren answered, in a tone that left no room for discussion. "What’s your name?"

Armin smiled, glad for Eren’s easy ability to make friends, and decided that Eren belonged in his life, with his memories or without. “I’m Armin,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

Eren made a strange face at him, but nodded. “I’ve got dinosaur toys. Wanna play?”

Armin nodded enthusiastically.

"Oh good, he’s met someone already," Armin’s mother remarked, watching the pair from a bench along the edge of the playground.

"I told you it wouldn’t be a problem," her husband replied. "Kids his age make friends like it’s nothing."

Their meeting had been as much of a relief to Eren as it had been to Armin, although it was troubling as well. Armin knew his name, but when Eren questioned him about it, claimed it had been a mistake. When he introduced himself, it truly seemed to be an introduction. Why would Armin do these things if he'd remembered Eren? Eren wondered for years, but held his tongue. His parents had reacted so viciously when he tried to maintain the reality of his dreams, and Eren had been so lonely in the two years it'd been since he'd decided against speaking of them again. He had finally found his best friend, he was real and tangible and in front of him, and Eren couldn't risk scaring him away too.

But still, Eren wondered.

"Do you remember when we met?" he asked aloud, laying on Armin's bed with his hands behind his head and his legs crossed at the ankle, eyes fixed on the ceiling. They were fifteen and studying vocabulary, and Armin sighed as he lowered his flashcards to glance at Eren.

"Of course I remember when we met," he replied, "but don't change the subject. Your word was misnomer."

"I'm not changing the subject. 'A mistakenly applied or incorrectly given name.'" Eren turned onto his side as he quoted the definition their English teacher had given them, propping himself up on his elbow and resting his chin in his hand as he looked down at his friend, seated cross-legged on the wood floor. "When we met, you called out my name. Then you said it was a mistake and you thought I was someone else."

"Yeah," Armin agreed. "There was a kid in my class named Aaron that I was kind of friendly with. You kind of looked like him from the back." His tone was even and he didn't seem perturbed, but Eren still had trouble believing his story.

"I never heard you mention him besides then and now," Eren pointed out. Armin shrugged.

"You and I were kind of inseparable after we met, remember?" he said with a grin.

"Still," Eren pursued, "don't you think that's a huge coincidence? You mistake me for someone who happens to have the nearly same name as me, then we end up becoming best friends?" He watched Armin for any sign of the blond faltering in his story, but saw none.

"Whatever it was, I'm glad it happened," Armin said softly. He gave Eren a gentle smile before turning his attention back to their flashcards and flipping to the next one. He paused a beat before reading out, "Next word, fallacious."

Eren frowned as he rolled onto his back, and stared up at the blank ceiling once more. "Illogical, deceptive, or misleading," he recited.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all enjoyed the first chapter and will stay tuned for the future chapters! This is my first serious SnK fic, so any criticisms or suggestions you guys have for me will be greatly appreciated!
> 
> Also, please note that, while the main plotline is completely planned out, some of the finer details are still being worked through as I write. Because of this, tags will probably be updated as I change my mind, or make up my mind, on certain aspects of the story. This goes for character tags too, I'm constantly changing my mind on who I'm going to include and who I'm not going to include. I don't want to include anybody who isn't going to serve a specific purpose, beyond the main group of characters, so there are certain characters who may be added once I decide on a purpose for them to have in the story! I'll try to tell you guys when there's been major changes, but this is just a warning to keep an eye on those tags!


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